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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504131">Dee You Bitch</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pussyhands/pseuds/Pussyhands'>Pussyhands</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dumb Kids [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Dee doesn’t get enough love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, References to Drugs, implied CharDee, implied macdennis - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:40:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,701</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pussyhands/pseuds/Pussyhands</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dee Reynolds is crying in the bathroom. She’s trying to cry very quietly, so no one hears. She has experience with that, when she was little she could cry in the car without even Dennis noticing, her face turned towards the window, griping her arms to hide her sobs, like she was cold.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Charlie Kelly &amp; Dee Reynolds, Dee Reynolds &amp; Dennis Reynolds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dumb Kids [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689493</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dee You Bitch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dee Reynolds is crying in the bathroom. She’s trying to cry very quietly, so no one hears. She has experience with that, when she was little she could cry in the car without even Dennis noticing, her face turned towards the window, griping her arms to hide her sobs, like she was cold. She shouldn’t have to do this, she shouldn’t have to be hiding out from her brother, his fucking life partner and old black man in her own goddamn apartment. She’s pretty sure old black man doesn’t give a shit anyways. Mac doesn’t either. Dennis... Dennis might give a shit, but she doesn’t want him to. </p><p>They’d probably laugh at her. Laugh at the 40 year old waitress who just failed another audition. It wasn’t even an audition for a good role. Deandra Reynolds was auditioning to be “crack whore number four”, and she still didn’t get it. Is this a sign? That she can’t even get a part as a crack addict when she herself was a crack addict? Dee doesn’t want to think about it, she tries not to think about these types of things. Sometimes she gets the nagging feeling that she hates Mac so much because she IS Mac, clinging to a story about himself that no one else believes anymore. She pushes the thought out of her head. She knows to never show weakness, to never feel weakness. </p><p>1983, Dee is hiding out in her room, one of her first memories. She’s hiding because Dennis fell, from the top of the stairs, while they were playing, and now he’s crying, and Barbara is probably coming up to get her, grab her by the arm and scream at her, her alcohol breath making six year old Dee sick. Dennis didn’t even get hurt that bad, but he still cried like he was getting flayed. He always did that, always the drama queen, “delicate”, Barbara would call him, with so much sugar in her voice it made Dee sick. Dee wasn’t delicate. Dee would never be delicate. She was strong, and that’s why her mother beat on her and not Dennis. Not because worst is first, certainly not because Dee wasn’t good enough. Just because Dee could take it, and Dennis never could. </p><p>1990 and Dee’s starting high school. She always thought she’d be popular, being rich, blond and thin, it was a given, but Barbara took her to get that horrible back brace over the summer and Dee is sure she did it in purpose, that she doesn’t really need it, it’s just one of her mother’s plots to destroy her life. The third day of high school the stupid thing gets snagged in a fence, and she has to try to disentangle herself, for what feels like hours, acting all the time as if she wants to stand there. She’s not trapped, she’s just leaning. At one point Dennis walks by. She tries to signal to him, but he’s all wrapped up in trying to impress that jerk Adriano, so he barely looks her way. She could never really count on Dennis, and Dennis always counts on her. This is because Dennis is becoming unhinged before her eyes. He’s become shifty and unpredictable, locking himself up in the bathroom to cry (more than usual) and wearing long sleeves all the time, trying to hide the cuts Dee’s seen, but not Barbara, because Dee is very observant, or because Dennis wants her to catch him, she’s not sure. Sometimes she feels like she was put on this earth to take care of this garbage human. She doesn’t want to do it anymore. </p><p>1997, Dee is rushed to the mental institution. She doesn’t register a thing, she feels numb. And buried deep down, the thought so wrong and dear to her it couldn’t stand the scrutiny of daylight, she’s glad they’re committing her. The attention’s on her now. Barbara visits a few times, basically siting on the edge of the chair next to her bed and making disparaging comments about her appearance. Frank doesn’t visit once. He tells her over the phone that it’s because he’s never stepping foot inside a “loony bin” again, but Dee suspects he just doesn’t care enough. At least with Frank she knows he’d act the same way if it was Dennis in her place, so it doesn’t sting as much. And Dennis... Dennis visits every goddamned week, sometimes multiple times a week. Dee knows that’s because she’s the only one he can talk to about his insecurities and inadequacies, because he has to keep up appearances in front of his friends, he needs to be admired by them. But he knows he’ll never be admired by Dee, so he sits on her bed and drones on and on, about college being so stressful, about maybe delaying veterinary school, just a few years, so he can get a taste of the real world. Maybe opening up a bar, Mac wants to get out of his mother’s house, why don’t they rent an apartment together? Dee thinks that’s a terrible idea, because Mac is in love with Dennis, and everyone knows it except Mac and Dennis. She doesn’t say so, because if she does Dennis is going to start thinking she’s his therapist or something. She just listens, nods along when Dennis tells her about this bar he’s scoping out and that he’ll hire her when she gets out. Who else is going to hire her? Fresh out of a mental institution? Dennis owes her this much. Dee has the uneasy feeling that Dennis is trapping her. He’s making Dee dependent on him. So he’ll never be alone, so he’ll never lack a shoulder to cry on, his security blanket, his reflection, only stronger, tougher, sturdier. Sweet Dee.</p><p>That’s why she’s still hanging out with these assholes. She can take their insults, their mocking laughs. She’s pretty sure she’s never hated anyone as much as she hates Frank. Maybe Barbara, but the bitch’s dead. She hates Mac too, pathetic bitch, or maybe she’s just bothered by how similar they are (“don’t think about that, stop it”) With Dennis it’s a little harder. After all, he’s the only other witness to their fucked up childhood. Sometimes she thinks she wouldn’t have made it out without him, despite her being the strong one, the one with the shoulder ready for Dennis to cry on, when he couldn’t fit into his size 30 jeans, when he obsessed about his nose being crooked for a whole year, when Frank called him a pussy bitch that time, on one of his rare visits home, for not being able to kill the rat they found in the garage with a bat. </p><p>Then there’s Charlie. Dee can’t think too long about Charlie anymore without a deep shame settling in the pit of her stomach and making her sick. She used to think that they had a special bond. Not because of any shared interest, but because of shared indignities suffered. All through high school Dennis was usually off somewhere with Mac, and she and Charlie would be left alone to talk, to share insignificant tidbits about their lives, which never turned out to be insignificant after all. About how Charlie didn’t like to be at home, so he’d spend his time loitering on street corners, hiding under bridges, sneaking into Mac’s house when Luther wasn’t in. About how Dee didn’t like to be home either, because it never felt much like home, the living room furniture never touched or sat on, empty glasses and pill bottles cluttering up the staircase (wait, hadn’t Dennis tripped on an empty wine bottle that time he fell? Who cares, never mind). They’d also talk about her dreams. Of how she was going to get her back brace off and be a famous actress and model, about how she’d remember him and fly him out to Hollywood, so he could try all the fancy cheeses they had there, like the ones she sometimes sneaked out of her house for him. </p><p>In some corner of her mind, Dee knew things changed after the slam poetry venture, and she has an inkling as to why. Dee doesn’t know if they’re ever going to recover from that. She doesn’t care, she tells herself. She doesn’t care about anybody, and nobody cares about her, and that’s the way she likes it. The way it’s always been and the way it will always be. That’s why she feels nothing but disgust when Dennis is being needy, telling her he loves her. He only says it because he’s terrified of being alone. Dennis doesn’t love her, he’s not capable of loving another human being, and neither is she. That is Barbara and Frank’s real inheritance, that’s their birthright. </p><p>Dee pulls herself up from the bathroom floor, as she’s done so many times before. She glances at herself in the mirror before leaving. Her eyes are puffy and red, eyeliner streaming down her cheeks. Maybe they’d buy me as a crack whore now, she thinks, but it’s not funny, not really. She doesn’t bother taking off her makeup. She rarely does, just lets it rub off on the pillow. The room is dark and everyone seems to be sleeping, and for that, she is grateful. She crawls over Dennis to get to her place in the center of the bed. There’s an arm thrown across the gap between Mac and Dennis, and when Dee goes to move it she’s surprised to find that it isn’t Mac’s arm, reaching out into the night. It’s Dennis’ arm and she feels a sharp pang of pain, something like jealousy, a deep feeling of emptiness right next to her heart. Because Dennis has someone to reach out to in the night, despite all the talk about hating Mac, and she has nobody. It’s because Dennis is needy, she tells herself as she tries to fall asleep between the heaving bodies, he’s insecure and needy and probably completely unhinged by now. That’s because he’s the delicate one. And Dee is nothing if not strong. She needs to be, so she is. Dee is strong as fuck.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Set after season 11</p><p>Dee has big feelings too, she just hides them better. Leave me a comment if you like it! Or if you don’t like it too.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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